Material Handling

Material handling is when materials are moved between two buildings for manufacturing purposes or around in one building in which it was created, using various types of equipment. Different types of material handling equipment are things such as

Fork lifts

Conveyer belts

Trucks

These are all methods in which the materials are processed and transported to other locations. Depending on what the items being moved are made of, depends on just how the materials will be handled. For example, non-hazardous items are usually stored together in bulk on something like a pallet and then using a fork lift can be moved after they are wrapped together with a special type of clear wrap before transporting them on to a truck to be shipped somewhere. Some of these trucks are made for the long haul meaning they are taking the items to a long distance often times out of state. Then there are one’s in which are transported more locally and can be moved to a delivery truck.

With the many types of material handling equipment out there, it’s hard to know which one to use for the right job. For example, there forklifts are good for transporting pallets around and helping to load trucks easier. Whereas dock levers and lifts allow for easy transport with the use of a forklift.Whenever a truck comes in to either unload a product or to be loaded, the dock lift comes up and then will come down in place with the end of the truck once in the loading dock. With an easy path now in to the truck, forklifts are capable of carrying pallets of products that weight more than what can be physically carried, in to the truck.

In much the same way a pallet jack can be used to accomplish the same thing. They slip inside of the pallet that is shrink wrapped with a product, lift it and then can be manually maneuvered on to the dock lift and in to the trailer to ship a product. However, in the case of incoming products just the same can work to manually remove the shrink wrapped product from inside the truck and in to the warehouse for sorting. There are a lot of different material handling pieces of equipment that go in to jobs such as these and each has its own unique purpose to help move things a long and accomplish the goal of the company.

In the long run all of these pieces of equipment will work together to go from having a product, to preparing it for departure and then eventually loading it for the product to be sent to whatever the destination might be. Some of these pieces of equipment can function on their own where as some may require some human interface. This is the way in which most products are handles especially when they are coming from a warehouse and are ordered in bulk forms that require them being palletized.

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